Tag Archives: Life

2016 Week 13 Update

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This was another short week and as of today, I am now down to exactly five weeks before my contract runs out. By right, the company I work for should formally let me know either this week or next if there’s no chance of continuing here, but will they do, I really don’t know.

I am also more confused than ever what will happen to me here, sometimes when Big B speaks to me or others, he alludes to me being around after the contract ends, but he does not say anything directly to me. Yes, the income coming in would be great, but I think I’ve made my peace with this situation, whatever happens, no hard feelings and I’ve got plans for the rest of my year, which I will share later.

Big B is going to be traveling mostly from next week for work and pleasure and I think in the next five weeks, he’ll be in two and out three. So far he’s in during what is supposed to be my last week here.

Life also will come a full circle – when I was recruited three years back, it was just before this major annual conference the department has and I had to get stuff ready in roughly two/three weeks’ time, and it all come together so beautifully that my then boss and his boss was full of praise. Now I will be leaving a month before the same conference, which will be in the same city as the first conference and my successor will be the one who has to dot the I’s and cross the t’s before the event and hopefully he/she is as successful as I was all those years back!

We went to a wedding on Good Friday and it was nice catching up with the extended family. The wedding was of the daughter of S’ father’s distant cousins and most of them are meeting GG & BB after eons and they were all startled how big they’ve grown – I’m talking some meeting them after 7-10 years, so you can imagine how astonished they were, since BB is quite tall (he is roughly 170 cm or 5 ft, 7 inches) while GG is shorter at slightly over 5 ft. 3 inches. The irony is that we all live in the same city and some of us live within a couple of kilometers away! That’s what a busy life does to you I guess….That’s why such social functions are great for catching up with friends and family…

Ok, back to the grind after a relaxing three days, gotta go to work now. Happy Monday everyone and we’re almost at the end of March which means a quarter of the year is done…..

Colouring for Adults: Have you tried it?

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There’s something so soothing mindlessly colouring, the only thing worrying you being whether you should be using red or carmine for this particular spot!

When GG & BB were younger, I used to print loads and loads of colouring pages for them, based on their favourite character of the day. In the process I also used to print some for me or used to sneak out some from their stash!

Even before adult colouring books became so popular, I loved colouring. But, and a big rider to this is that I only like to colour specific things. I love geometric shapes and mandalas and last week when I was cleaning out a cupboard, I came across a fat file full of mandala print-outs all ready to colour.

These days, these colouring books for adults are all the rage, the book which started this craze is Secret Garden which I hear has sold over 2 million copies since it was released in 2013. We see loads of such books in book stores, some even specifically themed. GG & I saw a Harry Potter coloring book and GG wanted me to purchase it for her! These books are quite expensive, retailing over SGD 35 per book and each time I see them and am tempted to buy, the price always puts me off!

But what is the lure of these books? Some people believe that the repetitive motion and confined space in which you have to colour triggers some kind of mental nirvana and gives you the peace of mind that digital devices distractions are forever chasing away. These help you to unwind and kick off the stress of the daily grind. I’ve since discovered that Carl Jung, the pioneering analytical psychologist often used colouring therapy as a means to get his patients to relax way back in the early 1900s and himself used to draw and colour mandalas every morning.

Colouring also trains our minds to focus, so that we do not go out of the line and live in the moment, which is getting to be critical life skill in our lives. It’s a given that colouring helps with fine motor skills because it requires both hemispheres of the brain to communicate and this activity improves fine motor skills and vision.

When I realized I could not get myself to buy the colouring books, especially since there were not many books which catered to what I like to colour, I discovered colouring apps! I can’t remember now where exactly I heard of them, but once I did, there was no stopping me. Most of these apps are free to use with in-app purchases. I’ve yet to pay for any, so keep reusing the same free prints that are available.

I downloaded a bunch of colouring apps and then deleted some of them almost immediately. Like I mentioned before, I prefer to colour geometric shapes and mandalas and those that didn’t have a good selection of those, didn’t make the cut and were deleted.

Colorfy is one where I where I mostly use the blank geometric patterns and make my own. This one has around 2 free palettes and a free daily palette which is usually shades of a single colour.

Another good one is Adult Colouring which seems to have a good mix of pages or books as they call it. Their free colour selections are also the most extensive, but sometimes the colours tend to overlap in palettes and it gets confusing after a while.

ColorTherapy is the last one I frequent. Again a good mix of themes to colour and this one also has a lot of festival-centric pages. Free colour selections are limited though!

All the apps above are from the Apple App Store. I do not know if they are available on Android phones and are free/with in-app purchases.

2016 Week 12 Update

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This was a very short work week for me. Since Monday, I’ve been feeling uncomfortable in my stomach and on Thursday it became worse. So at lunch I came home after speaking to Big B and went to the doctor who diagnosed it as stomach flu. So the rest of the week I decided to work from home and I just love working from home – I get a lot done without having to look and speak at people I dislike!

I’m down to 29 working days here now and am even more confused if that’s possible. I spoke to the site manager of the company which notionally employs me and according to this person; even they don’t know what is happening. The headquarters of this company is undergoing some savings plan and contract staff comes under this. Supposedly more clarity will be made available soon and everyone will know where you stand. I did speak to them about potential future employment opportunities and was told they can try something elsewhere, but only once they get clarity from my company.

Then on Friday we got the formal notification that the company is moving – and this move will mean a longer, maybe tougher commute for me. The move is going to happen around 18 months down the road and so will probably not impact me, but that’s also a factor in deciding to stay I guess. On one hand, I will be happy to leave the irritants and some of the work I detest, but the thought of being unemployed, dependent on S for money is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies! Also the thought of starting out from scratch……enough said I guess…..

I’d mentioned earlier that we were planning to get some work done in the house and we finally did it last week. Specifically we renovated GG & BB’s rooms, their study tables and BB’s bed. The rooms look a lot bigger now, but this also meant that we ended up spending quite a bit more than we planned. We need to buy BB a new bed and a bedside table and we should be done. Then some electrical work which should happen next week and painting! After this, I am going to save up some money and do my bedroom and the hall next – there are some built-in furniture which I dislike!

So that was week 12 for us. Happy Monday everyone and hope this week (another short week because of Good Friday and Easter) is great for everyone!

2016 Week 10 Update

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This week I’ve been in a funk! The reality that I will be unemployed in about 6 weeks time probably hit me and I’ve been completely unproductive the whole week. I had plans, none of which I did. I really need to step it up if I have to have any hope come May.

I did send out my resume to a few places last week, but no nibble yet, that probably also had a hand in why I was so out of sorts. Though I have plans on what I will do post May, I also don’t want to be in that position….Its a catch-22 situation for me and I don’t like it one bit!

Big B is being quite nice to me these days and I guess there’s some guilt involved in that. I do plan to let him know if I need to take time off for interviews, but so far there’s nothing, not even a speck in the horizon – guess my age and varied experiences are finally catching up with me, a situation I dislike tremendously.

This week will be a short work week for me as I am on leave on Friday. My sister-in-law is pregnant after trying for close to 10 years and that day is the traditional baby shower. Unlike western cultures, most Indian communities have a very elaborate baby shower or Godh Bharai in Hindi and Seemantham in Tamil. In our community this is done usually in the seventh or ninth month of pregnancy and traditionally this is the date when the pregnant woman leaves for her parents place to complete her pregnancy and deliver the baby. These days though, most women only go to their parents homes after delivery, if at all.

Hopefully, writing this down will be cathartic and I am able to shake off the funk that I’ve been in and this week is a good one! Have a great week people!!

 

My Greatest Fears as a Parent

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over-protective-parenting-cartoon

I’m not this bad…yet!

Every parent in the world has fears about their children. The world we live in, which is more enabled and intrusive than ever before, has so much negativity and evil, that I know for sure as a parent, I fear every time my children leave the house.

I think my greatest fear, as with that of any other parent, would be losing my children. I can’t even imagine such a scenario and honestly, when such a thought comes to my mind, I usually shy away from it and push it away. It is such a scary thought to me that I can’t even imagine it!

Now that we’ve set aside any parent’s greatest fear, I do have other fears for BB & GG.

One of my biggest fears is that they do not fulfill their potential in life. Both are very smart and intelligent people and have a lot to offer others, but and a huge but, is getting them to understand this. With the proliferation of electronic equipment and smartphones, it is so easy to get sucked up in playing games that you tend to lose focus of what is important and when. At this point in their lives, they need to get a good education which will stand them in good stead and help them reach their potential in life. Today’s world is much more competitive than it was before, especially given how easy it is find out information. What took me a couple of weeks of research to find out can be found out with a couple of clicks today and so you are not just competing (for seats in educational institutions or even jobs) with people in your district, state or even country, but with the millions outside about whom you know nothing about! Irrespective of what that is, I will stand by them, but I just wish I had some way of reaching out to them about not wasting time today about game playing!

funny

Another cartoon which sums up us parents perhaps?

GG is today in a vulnerable age where I sometimes really fear for her. With half-baked information about many things that she learns from her peers, sometimes it becomes difficult to know exactly what she knows which is right and what is wrong. I fear that she will get sucked into peer pressure and start relationships. Both are not interested right now, but who knows when this changes. I read in one of the parenting groups I belong on Facebook, that in one of the class whatsapp groups, someone sent a link to a pornographic site which was clicked by others who liked the link! This may be quite strange to western readers, but I guess Asian parents may see my point. Actually this is true, irrespective of the gender of the child. Adolescence is a time when hormones are in full bloom and this is definitely not the time to be thinking of relationships, sexual or otherwise. I have time and again told BB & GG that they should wait till they are more mature about this. My hope for both is to wait till university when they have their heads firmly in their shoulders, but failing that, to be more mature when dealing with relationships. School, with its pressure may not be the right age to have this in the mix. At the end of the day, I hope if they do get into a relationship, I hope they consider me a friend and are willing to confide in me.

I don’t want them to grow up entitled, behaving like jerks. They are growing up in a a country which is fairly affluent as compared to its neighbors and I have seen first-hand behavior of my countrymen behaving with a huge sense of arrogance entitlement when they travel abroad. I want GG & BB to learn to appreciate the beauty and culture everywhere and know that everywhere in the world there’s a huge opportunity to learn.
These are my top three worries as a parent. I actually have more, but thought, I’ll keep that for another day. What about you? Do you have any worries for your child? I’d be happy to read them….